


where i find myself

by charlottesometimes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Finn Angst, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Redemption, Plotty, Rey Angst, Rey has issues, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 18:24:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21396649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottesometimes/pseuds/charlottesometimes
Summary: After Crait, Rey gives up on Kylo Ren and commits herself fully to the Resistance.Too bad it turns out that even the good guys are way more complicated than she had ever day-dreamed they could be, as she grew up alone in the middle of nowhere.It's not long before she isn't sure whatanythingmeans anymore. Who could possibly relate to that?
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Leia Organa & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Leia Organa & Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	where i find myself

**Author's Note:**

> The plan for this fic came to me recently, and I started writing. I like it a lot, so I'm posting it ... even though we're at like 40 days out from The Rise of Skywalker. Oh well! Here's the first chapter! 
> 
> Please leave a comment if you have a moment. Let me know if this story feels worth continuing for a reader. Idk. 
> 
> Title is after the Empathy Test song, Where I Find Myself.

As they pulled away from Crait in the Millenium Falcon, ATATs growing small in their rear windows, Rey realized: He’d let them go. 

Kylo Ren had let them go. He could have reached out, tried to bend her mind through that last moment of Force connection, tried to force her to keep the Resistance grounded. He could have sent Tie Fighters to seek and intercept the Falcon. He could have risen from where he knelt on the floor of the base, taken action, given chase. He could have at least _ tried _to pursue them. 

But he didn’t. He was too distracted. Too emotional. Too broken and torn. 

The Resistance was going to win this war. She was sure of it. A man that split, that unsure of his own course and yet absolutely dedicated to it, a man who that often _ betrayed himself — _that was not a man who won. 

Rey might not know much, compared to people who had spent their lives flitting about the galaxy. But she knew that. 

**** 

The Resistance landed on Nikde — a planet in the Outer Rim, a few star systems away from Bantuu — a week after the siege of Crait. 

General Organa had formed an alliance with a crime syndicate. This fact did not please Rey, nor Finn, but Poe suggested that “crime” was a relative term, and Rey was trying to accept that. This syndicate controlled the rusty remains of what used to be a local interstellar government’s system of military plants and bases. They’d agreed to lend Nikde’s base to the remnants of the Resistance. 

Initially, forty people took up residence on Nikde. 

Forty. That was less than the population of Niima Outpost. 

But after just two weeks, there were more than 200. 

Still … 

“Reports indicate that a First Order battalion of 5,000 is garrisoned at Bantuu,” Lt. Connix reported on the very same day that 40 idealistic, high-class young people from a formerly Republic star system arrived to pledge their support to the Resistance despite their complete lack of military training. 

Five-thousand brainwashed soldiers. And that was just the _ nearest _garrison. 

The odds were bad. But, in this life, Rey’s odds had never been otherwise. 

****

The Force connection had not died with Snoke. Nor had it died when Rey forced her whole will into the act of snapping it shut in Kylo Ren’s face on Crait. 

Instead, it had changed. No longer did he bodily invade her space, like a parody of Luke’s fatal astral projection. No. Instead of that … it got _ worse. _

She sat staring out the window of her dorm on Nikde, still in awe of the lush jungle in which the base was nestled. A mug of caf steamed in her hands. The cushion beneath her was soft. The electric light buzzed above her. Moments like this told her how easy life could be, how simple a person might have it if they had money and simply chose not to care about the First Order. 

_ You must resist, _ her brain hissed, boiling suddenly with anger, _ the softness and ease of your youth. _

Rey’s spine stiffened. She stood. Quickly, she scanned the room: Bed, desk, bureau. 

No one was there. 

… But of course not. The words had been in her mind. 

And … they still were. They echoed, the accompanying emotion reverberating. Her heart sped up. Her hands pulled into fists — she wanted to hurt … _herself. _

Or to hurt _ someone. _ Or _ something _. 

_ Herself. _

But of course that thought was not her own. A series of steadying breaths helped her heart rate to fall, her fists to loosen. She could watch the feeling now, observe it. 

It battered at her mind like a temptation: _ Sell the droid. Take the portions. Look the other way, just this once. Drink the last of the water, though you’ll have none later. Stay in bed today; it’s so hot. Leave this planet. _

_ Let it in. Let the feeling in. _

But Rey resisted temptation, as usual. It was clear that she had to. To let that much twisted, clouded emotion in … well. 

It could ruin a person. 

****

“What happened?” Leia asked quietly, in the cafeteria. It was just a few days after the Resistance settled in on Nikde. “Between you and Kylo Ren.” 

Rey wasn’t sure how Leia knew that _ anything _had happened. 

But then again, she knew exactly how Leia knew. Leia might be a cypher to Rey — like so many things in this huge new galaxy — but Rey at least understood that Leia had some Force sensitivity. 

“Snoke bridged our minds,” she said. She kept her voice neutral, stuck to the facts. She told Leia the whole story, though briefly and efficiently. “I only managed to get away,” she concluded, “because we fought over Luke’s lightsaber until its crystal ruptured. The explosion knocked Kylo Ren out.” 

“And now.” Leia pressed her lips together and looked down into her tea. “You don’t think there’s conflict left in him?” 

Anger burned in Rey’s chest at the very question, though she wasn’t sure why. Was she mad at Kylo Ren for his wrong choice? At Leia for her weakness toward her son? At herself for ever wondering the same thing? “I don’t think it matters whether there is or not,” she said. “He made his choice and he isn’t wavering from it. His feelings don’t matter anymore.” 

_ So you can have me now, instead, _ said a treacherous new part of Rey. A part that she had only discovered the day she met Han Solo. She pushed that part down; _ it's your greatest weakness. Looking for them everywhere, in Han Solo, and now in Skywalker. _

For a few moments, Leia simply continued to stare into her tea. Then she looked up, smiled, and put her hand over Rey’s. “That’s what even Luke thought,” she said. “So I suppose it must be true.” 

Rey blinked, confused. “_ Even _Luke?” she asked. “Luke thought it most of all.” 

She didn’t understand why that seemed to make Leia so sad. 

****

In Snoke’s throne room, after Luke’s lightsaber shattered … Rey had awoken first. Bodies littered the floor around her, unmoving, growing cold. Kylo lay among them. 

She crept up beside him, scooping up the broken lightsaber as she went. 

He had a pulse; his skin was warm. He didn’t wake at her touch. 

_ This man wants to rule the galaxy. As head of the First Order. _

_ This man rejected an easy chance to do the right thing. _

_ (This man rejected me.) _

Kylo’s lightsaber seemed to pulse in her hand as she slipped her fingers around it. She lifted it from the floor where it lay. 

Kylo Ren had tried to kill Finn on Starkiller Base. He’d tried to kill _ her _ more than once. He was _ irredeemable. _She had been a fool.

_ One push of a button on this lightsaber … _

It would be so easy. And it would go such a long, long way toward ending the war. General Organa, Finn, the whole Resistance: They would be in her debt. They would have to accept her then, every one of them, forever. Even though she was an outsider. Even though she was nobody. Even though she had failed to bring them Luke Skywalker … 

Her knuckles whitened as she gripped Kylo’s weapon. One push of a button … 

“_ What _is going on here?” roared a voice. 

Rey shot up to standing, dropping Kylo’s lightsaber. She shoved Luke’s into her pocket. 

Hux stood alone in the wide doorway to the throne room. 

Rey acted on instinct. She started toward the door. As she walked, her hand shot out. “You will forget you saw me,” she said. “You will leave the room and re-enter as if this had not happened.” 

“I …” 

“You will forget you saw me,” she repeated. “You will leave the room and re-enter as if this had not happened.” 

Hux turned without a word and followed her out of the room. 

“And,” she added just before she disappeared down the shadowed corridor, “if you would like to kill Kylo Ren while he lays there unconscious … you will.”

****

“Finn did it _ again _,” General Organa said, arms crossed, as Rey approached her. It had only been two months since Crait, and Finn had already tried to leave Nikde on two other occasions. The General shook her head as she stared at the interrogation room screen showing Captain Finn, serial attempted deserter. “If it was up to me I’d just let him go. But Captain Tico caught him, and I can’t have word like that getting around.” She finally looked at Rey. “Will you talk to him?” 

On the screen Finn sat hunched, chin to chest, almost sulky. He still wore Poe’s jacket, even though he’d planned yet again to leave them all. 

A candle’s flame of anger ignited in Rey. She did her best to ignore it. 

“I don’t know what I could possibly say to him,” she said. “If he’s this determined to abandon the Resistance, there’s nothing I can do about it. Where _ is _Captain Tico?” 

“They devolved into shouting, when I sent her in,” the General said, voice almost amused. 

“Let him go.” Rey shrugged even as her own words pained her; if Finn left, she would deal with how that made her head spin later. “If he inspires others to desert, we didn’t need them anyway.” 

The General’s eyebrows went up. “We didn’t, did we? And here I thought we had a serious man power issue.” 

“I just mean that deserters are not—”

“No,” Leia said. She shook her head. “We do need them. We need every last one of them. Now go talk to your friend.” 

“I don’t—”

“Go.” 

It was Rey’s turn to be sulky. But she turned and pushed through the doors to the interrogation room. 


End file.
